Page 38 of Fathers of the Bride
“It is.” I set down my fork. As good as the salad was, I’d just gotten a little bit queasy. If the truce was going to hold, we’d have to get through this.
He didn’t want to sell the house. Well, neither did I. Yes, we’d been talking about selling it for a couple of years—but we’d been doing that through lawyers. This was the only time we’d spoken directly to each other about selling the house.Ourhouse. Somehow it was different.
I suppose, when we’d first broken up and Kelly was a still at UCLA and then we decided to keep the house until she came back from the Peace Corps, well, everything just seemed so far off. There was time. Lots of time. And now there wasn’t.
“Yes, we’ll sell the house and pay everything off.” I took a deep breath and said something I had not really intended to say, “You can have whatever’s left.”
“That’s ridiculous. We should split it.”
“You’ll need it for a down payment on another house.”
“But…” he began and then stopped. “I’ll have to think about that. Let me get the beef.”
13
Miles Kettering-Lane
A truce.Really? Is that what I wanted? It must be. I’d brought it up. I’d sent the olive branch. But was I ready?
After Andy and I split, I’d wrapped myself in anger as though it were a fuzzy old blanket. It was there for me every day, reliable, steadfast, familiar, oddly comforting. Things my husband no longer was.
I took my anger everywhere with me, just the way Kelly carried a scrap of her baby blanket until she was six. Like my daughter with her blankie, I tucked my anger into a pocket, kept it in a lunch pail, hid it in the glove compartment. You might not see it right away, but it was there. Always there.
Which is not to say I wasn’t often proud of the anger I’d nurtured. I did bring it out for special occasions, phone calls to old friends, a party once, emails to Andy—which I deleted before hitting send. Well, I deleted some of them.
The thing I learned after spending so much time with my anger is that it never actually gets you what you want. Yes, it may seem that what you want is to scream at someone, to tell them off, to express the anger—but really that’s only what your anger wants. If you ask yourself calmly whatyouwant, it’s never any of those things.
What I wanted when Andy and I split, what I still wanted, was for Kelly to be happy and safe. I wanted her not to suffer because of the disaster we’d suddenly made of our lives. Hence, the truce.
It made sense. It was the next logical step.
I took out one of my favorite platters. It was big, colorful and Mexican. We’d bought it on a trip to Rosarito Beach. It did not go with the Pink Willow dishes or anything else on the table, but that didn’t matter. As I used to say on my show, life is better when it’s not all matchy-matchy.
I spread out the saffron rice I’d made and then spooned the Bourguignon on top of it. Tucking serving utensils into each side, I stopped. Had Andy really offered meallthe equity left in the house after we sold it? Why had he done that? Did it mean something? And was that something good or bad? Did he feel sorry for me? Was it pity?
Pity. How dare he—ah, there was the anger, my dear old friend. The last thing in the world I wanted, or needed, was Andy Lane’s pity. I walked out to the terrace and would have slammed the platter on the table, but I really liked it and didn’t want it to break.
“Well, that looks delicious,” he said. “I’ve missed you. I mean, I’ve missed your cooking.”
What did he mean by that? Did he miss my cooking? Or did he miss me? And did any of it matter? It didn’t. I should throw him out. No, I shouldn’t. I’d started the truce. I should see it through. He’d said something nice, so I should say something nice.
“You’re not as tangerine today.”
He’d been reaching for the serving spoon but stopped. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your tan. It doesn’t look as bad.”
“I used an exfoliant.”
“Well, it worked. It looks better. Much better.”
He shrugged. “It worked out. We got paid to endorse the spray tan. Then we got paid to endorse the solution to the spray tan.”
I didn’t quite understand that, so he said, “The exfoliant.”
“Ah, of course. And how long did you have to be tangerine?”
“I thought we were being nice,” he said, scooping the stew on to his plate.
